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The Eon Holiday Special (2009)
(AKA the Eon Halliday Special, AKA the Eon Christmas Special. All we can agree on is it's definitely pretty darn special.) In which a small group of adventurers enters the Hall of Many Things in 1441. This is a oneshot run because several players were interested in exploring the Hall, but it was not appropriate in-character for the current Eon Prime party. Summary The First Attempt The party meets up in the Temple of Olidamarra in mid-morning. Tiemp Hiss, having lost absolutely everything in a game of Double Dragon Ante, had forced Neax Hiss to cover his debt due to a detail of neogi law, and thus now owed everything to him. He's come to the Hall to get treasure with which to pay off his debt, and to ensure that this happens, Neax sent Kalera and Apple, two outsider slaves, to protect him and ensure the mission succeeds. Lyle, meanwhile, is also looking to pay off Neax, but instead of a debt, he wants enough money to pay for Alton Hilltopple's release. Luke, having grown up in Malvont, thought that the Hall would make a great story, and had befriended Lyle and offered to help him with his quest. There are several priests and a paladin at the temple, as well as some normal worshipers. A paladin offers a sacrifice and prays; a vision appears and says "Yes." The party finds a priest and, after some brief misunderstandings about their intent, gets it across that they want to enter the Hall. They meet the bacon cleric and his attendant, a Malvont city guard. The bacon cleric demands 1500 gold pieces from the party, and Tiemp attempts to enslave him, misunderstanding the power level of the head priest of a temple in a major metropolitan area. The priest first casts circle of death, killing Kalera and Luke instantly, then goes a few rounds with Tiemp before killing him as well. The entire party wipes. Oh, Wait ... That Didn't Happen. The entire party, now a level lower, arrives at the temple of Olidamarra in the early morning. Since it is 5:00 AM, they decide to rest a bit so that they won't have to wake the cleric up and face his annoyance. Luke stays up to watch the light in the morning, and everyone else curls up asleep on the steps. At a more reasonable hour, they enter the temple and agree to let Luke do significantly more of the talking this time. A paladin is beginning to cast Commune; Lyle approaches him and asks what he's going to ask his god. "Should I join the order of the Holy Returners" is apparently the question. Luke talks to a rogue in the back, who turns out to be Solid Snake; he sends him to talk to a pillar, which turns out to be ... a pillar. Eventually, Lyle pounds on the door and a priest comes out. When told the party wants entrance to the Hall, he leads them to the lead cleric in the lower level. The cleric wants 250 gold each; by bargaining, Luke manages to get the party in with Kalera's morning star, a potion of jump, some keen oil, and five rubies. Apple asks about the priest's collection of potions, and ends up displaying interest in a potion of bull's strength (illegal in Malvont) and admitting to possession of a fire scroll (very illegal in Malvont). Luke, noticing this, tells Apple to let him negotiate and bluffs that Apple, recently arrived from another plane and still learning Common, did not understand what he was bargaining for and had mistaken tindertwigs for scrolls of fire. This passes muster, and Apple narrowly avoids banishment. Tiemp peers into the lock and reads that a single word has been written on each of the tumblers: "I" "prepared" "explosive" "runes" "today". After the lock explodes in the neogi's face, Lyle picks it with surprising ease despite his lack of training, and the party enters the room. Spikes! On the Side of My Cleric! The first room is a circular room with a pit in the middle of it. By the side of the pit is the corpse of a dwarf holding a hammer and a femur. Luke loots his body, taking a rope and a purse of gold. Lyle takes out a mirror he brought and it shatters; he then takes out another and it also shatters. (Apparently, an earlier "noted" Two meant that any mirror Lyle holds now shatters.) Kalera notices spikes on the ceiling, and someone notices writing on the back of the door: "Shiny and round, I shine with pale light/ Once you have me, I'm a gnome's delight." Luke takes the dwarf's femur and drops it down the hole, listening and hearing a very loud smashing sound after a few seconds. Apple sounds around the room with her crowbar and finds a hollow in the wall; she then pulls out a sledgehammer and begins hammering the wall, eventually making a roughly 1 foot square hole in the wall. Kalera casts light on a piece of trash from her inventory and dumps it in the hole; as it glides down, the party sees that the pit is very deep, full of sharp spikes, and also contains a door and a small shiny object between the spikes. The ceiling spikes begin to grind down slowly. Luke tags himself, Kalera, and Lyle with Feather Fall; he tries to tag Tiemp as well, but accidentally fails and loses the slot. Apple ties a piton to the rope and shoves it through the hole, allowing her to anchor the rope. Luke shoves the dwarf's body into the hole and begins to float down, attempting to land on the dwarf's body. As he reaches about fifteen feet above the ground, the wall shoots out and slams him into the other wall. He dodges out of the way somewhat, and survives, landing on the dwarf. The door at the bottom of the pit, he realizes, is painted on. He identifies the shining object as a pearl and grabs it with Mage Hand. As the ceiling spikes reach the floor, Kalera and the neogi cling to the rim of the pit as Apple, Lyle and Lyle's dog hang down into the pit on Lyle's rope. Luke tosses the pearl to Lyle, who interprets the writing on the door to mean that they should cast Light on the pearl. He tosses it up to Kalera, who casts the spell, stopping the spikes. As Lyle and Apple attempt to slide down, they are hit by the slam trap, which smacks into them and detonates all four of Apple's bombs. The resulting explosion knocks Luke unconscious, and he begins bleeding out. Apple lands heavily on the spikes, but survives, and takes out a scroll of Cure Minor Wounds, using it to stabilize Luke. Apple discovers a secret door hidden behind the painted door, uses a scroll of Cure Light Wounds to bring Luke to consciousness, and Luke casts Open on the door. Apple carries Luke and Lyle into the room, sets them down, then rigs a pole, a canvas, and his own ten-foot reach to create a makeshift trampoline with which to catch Kalera and Tiemp when they jump down. Luke plays along on his lute, inspiring the rest of the party to do slightly better. Kalera first tosses her spike armor, then jumps herself and is caught; Tiemp also falls and is similarly caught. Everyone makes it into the eponymous Hall, and the party decides to rest and recover. They bed down in the hall and sleep for the night. Tears Without Tea Upon waking up and healing, the party looks at the back of the door and sees "Tears without tea/ years without you/ why? why be?" In a mirror, this instead reads "Mirror mirror, tricky tricky," and with read magic, "Magic magic, tricky tricky." They spend much of the day considering various permutations of these letters. Numerology, letter elimination, phonetics, and anagrams are all considered, as are the various meanings of "without" and the possible merits of deciding to 'fuck this shit'. Luke eventually connects the 'ears' from the first two lines with the 'be' from the end after taking away the 'why', leading to 'ears ears be'. Lyle realized that part of this can anagram to 'bears', and Kalera anagrams the remaining letters to 'erase'; Luke writes 'bears e ra se' and realizes that it signifies 'bear's endurance.' (Some years later and yet at the same time, Ashra wakes up, realizes this, smacks her forehead, and mutters the answer; it is now irrelevant to the party, but she has cemented her title of Puzzlesolver and earned a hero point.) Having spent the day puzzling over this, the party decides to rest again so that Kalera can prepare bear's endurance. The next day, they cast Bear's Endurance on the writing on the back of the door. The previously sealed door which Lyle had assumed led to a tomb slides up, revealing what appears to be an elevator with four levers. Apple holds Tiemp in the air and lets him crane his head, allowing him to read the back of the door, which reads, "I live in the ocean, desert, and forest ONLY/ I move twice a year, ONLY/ ONLY the sun can kill me/ I can turn into a liquid or solid, ONLY/ If a human touches me, they are killed ONLY/ I am blue." After discussing possible implications of this, the party realizes they don't actually have a clue about this one, and they decide to investigate the other two doors. I Has a Happy Mirror ... It's Not All That Great, Actually One door leads to a large pile of gold, two longswords, a greatsword, a short sword, and atop it all a Mask of Tiamat. The swords and masks are magical, as is the rope Luke picked up from the corpse; an initial failure at casting causes him to gain proficiency in hand crossbow. The other door leads to a square room with a door in the middle which is not set into any wall. In front is a skeleton with an elongated skull, which Luke thinks is probably a mind flayer's skeleton. It holds a spellbook, which Luke takes; when holding it up to the light, its apparently blank pages reveal the impressions of the spell Symbol of Death. Lyle runs up, opens the door, sees another plane, and shuts it. Luke opens the door and stares into infinity, which he does not comprehend, but which is sufficient to give him a Sanity Point. Everyone takes turns opening the door, which reveals many different planes in turn. Apple hides in another room. When Tiemp opens the door, a dragon breathes fire on him and Lyle. One opening of the door reveals Hell and emits noxious gas, which poisons Luke and Tiemp. The Plane of Negative Energy makes an appearance, as does a mind flayer despair stone puzzle in the Ruins of Eldergrin, with a mind flayer standing at the brink of the ledge. A statue of Xenteroth casting a spell also appears at one point. Then Luke gets curious about what happens if you look into the door from behind. He asks Lyle to look while he opens the door. Lyle sees the hall in front of him, but in place of the mind flayer's body is his own, and everyone but the neogi's bodies are in the Hall, variously dead. Luke wants to explore, but fears being stranded. Kalera agrees to hold the door open, and Lyle warily agrees to hold the rope. The party decides to use the magic rope, which Luke has failed to activate properly, and to test the connection with a badger from Lyle's bag of tricks. The badger goes through successfully, and Luke ties the rope around himself. He walks in from the back of the mirror. First he finds his own body, apparently freshly killed from arrow wounds. He searches himself and finds a mirror in his backpack. Because he does not have Ashra's experience, despite a certain similarity*, he looks at the door in the mirror, stares into infinity again, and picks up a second sanity point. After snapping back to reality, he examines the puddle which was Kalera, finding nothing, and finds a Mask of Olidamarra on the body of Apple. He puts it on and is overcome by a rush of images, taking him back in time to the Ruins of Eldergrin. When he comes to, he takes the mask off. He looks at it in the mirror, sees the face of Olidamarra, and picks up a third sanity point. Then he decides that the mask and the Happy Mirror should really stay in his backpack for now before he goes completely batshit. He moves towards Lyle's body, but Lyle beats him to it, taking a backpack full of smiley-face coins from his own corpse. Tiemp goes into the mirror, circles around to the back of that mirror, and sees the a door in the mountains by the coast of Malvont. He looks at the back of this door and sees some lines from the Ille Draconum: "The strand of Orc held the holy writ and only the greedy Tiamat, crusher of the impious, begrudged the ill-gained gift." Luke unties himself and checks the other door, and sees that the treasure room has been replaced with a pit. Meanwhile, Apple goes into the elevator and pulls the red lever on a whim. He is massively electrocuted, but survives. Luke, thoroughly freaked out at this point, briefly comes back, then returns to examine the bodies. It appears that the party killed each other, judging by the weapon marks. He goes back into the normal plane, and the party debates the arrangement of the bodies in the room -- when Lyle was the one to open the door, Luke's body wasn't there, but when Kalera opened the door, Tiemp's body isn't there. Kalera explores a few times, and before she goes in he whispers into her ear, "Since you were kind to me, if there's a mirror, don't look in." Experimentation with the order of who opens the door and who goes through changes nothing, but the party notices the changes over time: When Luke had only one sanity point, he presumably survived, but when he had three, he died; as soon as Kalera and Luke began to get along, their bodies were always close together, and instead of spikes, dagger marks appeared, as though Luke had fought with Kalera's support; Apple's body always had everyone's attacks on him; Tiemp always escaped. The party changes the order of people opening and going through the door, but when Kalera opens the door onto the Astral Plane and Tiemp walks in from the back, a djinn appears and Kalera slams the door, stranding Tiemp. Tiemp opens the door from his side and walks out into an alternate Prime Material Plane. A cleric of Saint Cuthbert asks what he's doing there and demands that he leave. "Exiting the dungeon. Can you direct me to the gift shop?" is his reply. He manages to successfully enslave the cleric, but fails at forcing him to tell his supervisor that everything is fine. The party begins to debate what to do now. The masks are clearly the most expensive treasure, but the floor might fall in as soon as the weight changes. Apple comes up with an intricate plan involving a sack, a ten-foot pole, and a chain, by which the party could scoop up gold; her cast of Augury, however, reveals that this is likely to be a Bad Idea. Luke uses the mask in his inventory to gauge the weight of the mask of Tiamat, then uses two simultaneous spells of Mage Hand to swap some of Kalera's trash for the mask. As soon as he holds the mask, however, he does not want to let it go when Lyle asks for it. Having received three sanity points in about an hour's time, he isn't in the best frame of mind, so he puts the mask on. He gains a breath weapon and is overtaken by paranoia even more extreme than his sanity loss had previously inflicted. As the party attempts to plot their next actions, he accuses them repeatedly of not trusting him, and Kalera repeatedly tells him that she trusts him. She is the only one he believes. *Okay, not really; Ashra had a different player at that time, but the irony still gets me. Did I mention that a two made Luke attract lightning? I don't think I did. Love in the Time of Cholera: It's My OTP and I Kinda Ship It The party decides to rest for one more night in the Hall so that Kalera can regain all her healing spells, allowing her to heal Apple to the point where he can try the blue lever in the elevator and take the damage. Luke refuses to sleep, instead sitting up all night, staring at the party and making hourly Will saves against the mask he's still unwilling to take off. He does manage to keep it together (as well as someone rocking three more sanity points than he had yesterday can keep it together) and the rest of the party awakens refreshed and recharged. Apple suggests that Luke play something, and he rocks out in a corner while the rest of the party discusses how best to get some treasure and GTFO. After some debate, Apple decides to go alone in the elevator and test out the blue lever. She enters, pulls the lever, and shoots to the bottom of a shaft; the doors open and reveal a spiral staircase up. She pulls the lever again and returns. Having established the way out, the entire party piles into the elevator. Luke insists he will go wherever Kalera goes, and Lyle and Apple just want out. As Apple pulls the lever, the party is painfully reminded of the "I move twice a year, ONLY" part of the puzzle as the floor of the elevator drops out. Lyle and Apple cling to the edge; Luke and Kalera plummet, but have a few moments time. Kalera wraps her arms around him (lightly, in a non-spiky way) and says "I trust you." Luke Feather Falls them both, allowing them to fly gently down. The walls smash together, knocking Luke unconscious; he falls to the ground, bleeding, and Kalera lands near him. She stabilizes him with Cure Minor Wounds, then confiscates both masks, puts them in her bag, and heals him again. He regains consciousness, feeling better now that the mask is off his face, but he's still crazy and very weak. Kalera yells up to the others that they are fine, picks up Luke in her arms, and charges up the stairs. She flings the door open and emerges in the lower room of the temple. The bacon cleric stares and offers Kalera some bacon; she sets Luke down on a bed and feeds him bacon, fretting over him. Meanwhile, Apple and Lyle tie a rope to the levers and climb down the shaft, then follow the others up the stairs and receive their bacon. Kalera goes to meet Lyle, hands him the mask of Tiamat, and tells him it's his fair share. Epilogue Lyle takes the mask of Tiamat to Neax Hiss to free Alton Hilltopple. Kalera takes the mask of Olidamarra to buy her freedom and Apple's. Luke accompanies Kalera, and the two head off together, intending to eventually restore his sanity. Apple goes off to do his own thing. Tiemp enjoys his time on an alternate plane of existence, now a plane away from his debt. Characters *Kalera *Luke Morning Light Fenn *Lyle Tosscobble the 471st *Tiemp Hiss *Apple Category:Seasons